Yemen is a desert country located at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, washed by the Red Sea and the Bab El-Mandeb Strait in the west. It borders Saudi Arabia in the north and Oman in the east. Except for the coastal plains to the west, the Yemeni landscape is a mountainous landscape with high and dry mountains with jagged peaks and plateaus. Yemen has no permanent rivers, but the high mountain regions are punctuated by several seasonal river valleys, called “Wadi”, which remain dry during the winter months.
The most notable among these are Wadi Hadhramaut and Wadi Dawan, in eastern and central Yemen.
And in the photo you can see Haid Al-Jazil - a village that is completely built on a boulder.
Wadi Hadhramaut is a narrow, arid coastal plain bounded by a steep escarpment of a vast plateau. The northern edge of Hadhramaut slopes down to the vast dry Rub al Khali desert. The upper part of Wadi Hadhramaut contains alluvial soils and flood waters, while the lower part is barren and mostly uninhabited.
In Hadhramaut, people live in densely populated towns and villages concentrated on the traditionally irrigated lands along the Wadi. The buildings cling to a slope or stand on a plateau, 100 or 200 meters above the valley level. Many of them hang over the rocks. The houses are built of adobe bricks with wooden floors and rise several stories high. These adobe buildings need to be constantly renovated, especially after the summer rains.
Promotional video:
In Wadi Hadhramaut, the most famous is the city of Shibam, which is also called the “Manhattan of the Desert” because of its unusually tall buildings that rise sharply above the desert plateau. This small town with 7000 inhabitants and about 500 adobe houses, consisting of 5 and 11 storey buildings, reaching 100 meters in height. They are all built entirely of mud bricks.
Davan's architectural heritage overshadows Wadi Hadhramaut today as its towns and villages have been much better preserved over the past two decades.
Yemen is one of the oldest regions of human civilization, but remains one of the poorest Arab countries. In recent decades, it has become a hot zone for terrorist groups, making travel to this beautiful country at a significant risk to life.
And here you can see and read more about the Dar al-Hajar Gingerbread Castle.